


Grifter? I Barely Knew Her!

by avocadomoon



Category: Working Girl (1988)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: She's got a 401k and health insurance for the first time in her adult life, and she's paying off her credit cardsandher student loans which is a goddamn miracle, and so yes she has an ulcer, no she has no social life, yes she stress-cries a little every morning in the shower but that's normal right? Tess is pretty sure everybody does that.
Relationships: Jack Trainer/Tess McGill
Comments: 15
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Grifter? I Barely Knew Her!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maidenjedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/gifts).



Katharine Parker was _Katharine Parker,_ nobody fucked with _Katharine Parker._ Tess wanted to work for her because she was sharp and tough and she knew everybody who was anybody in New York; her office Christmas parties were legendary. Tess knew a girl who worked at Goldman Sachs who got an invite two winters ago and has been telling the story ever since about how she saw Katharine slipping into a coat closet with Lena Dunham, which was probably a lie but fits neatly into the crosshairs of "cool" and "insufferable" that every powerful person in New York covets. (Katharine heard this story at a cocktail party that Tess was at, and she laughed and didn't deny it.)

Tess hates her job but whatever. She's got a 401k and health insurance for the first time in her adult life, and she's paying off her credit cards _and_ her student loans which is a goddamn miracle, and so yes she has an ulcer, no she has no social life, yes she stress-cries a little every morning in the shower but that's normal right? Tess is pretty sure everybody does that. How do you live in New York and _not_ do that, is her line of thinking.

"What," Jack says, "is 'stress-crying'?"

"It's when you cry because you're stressed," Tess explains patiently, because Jack doesn't mean to play dumb, he just really doesn't live on the same planet as she does. Some days Tess is amazed he makes it into work at all, since she's pretty sure he walks there every day from 1969. And Cyn thinks _she's_ got it bad because she lives in _Staten Island._ "I'm not saying I do it _every_ day, I'm just commenting on the fact that it's much more frequent than I'd expected. You know, before I got into this business."

"Oh. I used to do that, only for me it was drinking," Jack says, looking up from his computer. His dorky reading glasses reflect the financials on his laptop that he's been combing through, magnifying his eyes weirdly. "Also racquetball. Sometimes at the same time."

"Drunk racquetball?" Tess lowers the screen of her own laptop so she can give him a sassy eyebrow, which never fails to make him smile at her. She gets a little thrill in her chest each time - he never disappoints. Simple pleasures - that's what life's all about. "That sounds...amazing. I'm being genuine, here - totally bomb. Can I come?"

"Sure," Jack says easily, with a sly twist to the words that signal the oncoming approach of a joke. Tess braces for impact. "And then maybe afterwards we can take some Xanax and do some hot yoga."

"Low blow," Tess says with a pout, and pushes her screen back up. She'd taken the Xanax by _accident._ And the sight of Jack Trainer in yoga shorts would make _anybody_ pass out, really, painkillers aside. "Did you ever go back to that class, by the way?"

"No." Jack frowns at his keyboard, poking at it with two fingers, which is how he always types. He and computers _really_ don't get along, hence why his emails are always like ten words maximum, which is one of the reasons why he has such a grumpy reputation. Tess had let that one slip a few weeks ago, which had flustered him so much he stepped in a giant puddle in the middle of the crosswalk and had to change into his spare slacks in the men's room of a Papaya King. "It was a Groupon."

Tess bites her lip, trying not to smile too stupidly. She fails, she's pretty sure.

"Maybe you should meditate. I hear that helps with stress."

"So does sex," Tess says.

Jack leans sideways on his elbow, craning his head around his computer screen, and slowly raises his eyebrows at her. Tess waggles her eyebrows back at him, and he twitches a little, lowering his head to look at her over the rims of his glasses. Then he slowly slides back, until the computer is blocking his face again. Tess giggles, turning her face so that it's muffled against her shoulder.

"I like it, don't get me wrong," she says. Frowning at her spreadsheets, she goes over that sentence one more time in her head: _I like it._ She does. She swears she does. It's just that sometimes she forgets that she likes it and begins to hate it. "It's not what my mother wants me to do with my life, but if I listened to my mother about everything I'd be married to my high school boyfriend right now. And obviously the money is a point in the pro column too."

"Are you still talking about sex?"

Tess laughs. "Pig."

Jack leans his head against his hand and grins down at his keyboard, still pecking away with his index finger. "What, you didn't want to be a stockbroker when you grew up? I thought that was every little girl's dream."

"No, I wanted to be a ballerina."

"I like ballerinas," Jack says. Coming from any other man, it would've been a come on. But Jack says it earnestly, without even looking at her, and Tess believes it. He probably really does like ballerinas. He probably read Misty Copeland's book and told all his friends at the country club about it, because he was honestly really impressed by her dedication and athleticism. "You probably would've made a good one. But you're a hell of a stockbroker, too. So I'm glad you went the other way."

Tess bites her lip, keeping her eyes on the computer. It's starting to feel rotten, the lie. Every day that goes by, it starts to grow vines, creeping up her ankles. It was _so_ much easier when she thought he was just a WASP-y, grumpy, Wall Street square. "Thanks."

Jack smiles at his keyboard again. "My eyes are crossing."

"And you're just now noticing, Four Eyes?"

He snorts. "Dinner's on me. They just put Veselka's on Postmates." He rubs his hands together in excitement. "Do you like pierogi, Tess?"

Tess swallows thickly, and answers with every scrap of earnestness left in her stressed out, desperate soul. "I _love_ pierogi, Jack."

"Good." His eyes are a warm, beautiful blue behind his glasses, which Tess doesn't mind so much now, after weeks of seeing him wear them. He looks like a nerd, which is what he is, so it's honest, at least. And when they're working late, sometimes he takes off his suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves, and then he looks like a hot nerd dom in a porno, which is also very nice. "I do love a woman who appreciates fried food."

Now _that_ was a come on. "Take me to KFC sometime and then I'll really blow your mind, handsome."

His watch flashes at her, reflecting the light from the desk lamp as he reaches across his desk for his cell phone. "No dirty talk in the office," he says, already scrolling. "My receptionist will rat us out to HR."

Tess grins so hard her cheeks hurt, hiding it behind the screen. His receptionist is Cyn's roommate from CUNY; she'd do no such thing. Still, it can't hurt to let him keep thinking that.

It was sort of an accident in that she really did mean to take the meeting on _behalf_ of Katharine, but also not an accident in that Tess had no real intention of identifying herself as a secretary. In most firms they were called "receptionists" - like Jack's firm, for instance, which was one of those progressive offices that offered paternity leave for dads and had a childcare center on the first floor - but Katharine was not a progressive boss, and Tess was not a receptionist. Receptionists didn't have to pick up their bosses' dry cleaning, nor did they clean out cars and book hair appointments and kick out one night stands discreetly at seven o'clock in the morning. Well - maybe some receptionists did that, but not Wall Street receptionists. Cyn worked at a bank in Midtown and the worst thing she had to do was kick out homeless people.

But Katharine Parker was Katharine Parker; she was the first woman to make it to the executive level at RBC, in the 90s she was a pioneer, she was on the cover of Forbes in 2001, she knew Bill de Blasio and Kirsten Gillibrand and had a polite correspondence with the Clintons, which Tess proofread for her every so often. Even getting the interview felt like a huge break; Tess had floated on air for a month, thinking this was the open door she'd been waiting for, that this legendary, feminist businesswoman was going to Mentor Her somehow (she knew Katharine Parker was a feminist because she did an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which she was quoted saying, "nobody likes the feminist who brings up pay equity at the dinner table, but boys - get used to it!" which had been subsequently featured in a coffee table book of Real World Feminists - mostly quotes that said the same thing over and over - which Katharine had later sued the publishers over since nobody had asked her permission). This was, of course, not what happened, because Katharine Parker is a legendary fucking nightmare. Tess _hates_ her job.

Four weeks into it, Tess got dumped by her awful boyfriend Mic, a very trendy conceptual artist who didn't believe in monogamy and wanted Tess to change her name to Téa, for reasons he couldn't explain coherently. She caught him fucking their upstairs neighbor on the coffee table (the ONE person Tess told him not to fuck! She _hated_ that snotty asshole _and_ her stupid parakeet), and after a couple hours of screaming and stomping up and down the stairs, loading her car up with enough clothes to last her a few weeks, he finally lost his temper and threw her laptop out of the second floor window, and the landlord called the cops. Tess gave Katharine the edited version of this story the next morning, to explain why her company-owned computer was now a company-owned scrap pile, and Katharine tilted her head, arranged her face into a sad expression, and patted her hand.

"It's good that you got out when you did," she said. "Domestic violence is like a whirlpool. Once you get caught in the tide, it's _so_ hard to get out of." Then, while Tess tried to work out the logistics of that simile - wasn't that a brand of hot tubs? - Katharine sent an email to accounting to make sure the cost of the laptop would be subtracted from her next paycheck.

"Don't worry, your bonus next month will cover it," she said with a wink. "It's so nobody thinks there's any favoritism going on. You understand, right? It's only fair." Tess nodded meekly, and didn't mention that the secretarial staff's Christmas bonuses were gift cards to Outback Steakhouse. She'd stopped trying to impress Katharine, after that.

They all warned her it would be hard, but they didn't warn her about people like Katharine - who were _supposed_ to be on her side, who said all the right things that made her _think_ she'd be cool, and then turned around and kicked her while she was down, just because she could. Tess can handle the sleazeball traders who bump coke in the bathroom and loudly sexually harass her in the break room, she can handle the old man executives who look right through her and leave their empty coffee cups on her desk. She can even handle the sneaky ones, the up and comers and Ivy League interns who act nice and charming and kind and then steal her ideas and talk over her in meetings. All of _that,_ she can handle. But Katharine Parker? She wasn't ready for that. It stings, to be honest. Every time.

Tess is twenty-nine years old, which is only a year away from thirty (in case she forgets, she has a countdown on her calendar), she graduated Summa Cum Laude from CUNY, which was impressive for about a minute and a half before she realized that everyone else had degrees from Columbia and Yale. Half the people she's worked for have been younger than her, and all of them came from money. It's a game, is the thing - she's always known it was a game, always known that the daughter of a plumber and a high school English teacher was going to have to claw her way through, no matter what kind of grades she got or how early she showed up or how good she was. She's got the wrong accent, the wrong hair, the wrong background. She's too poor, too crass, too _girly_ to really fit in - she's gotten the message a few hundred times by now, thanks. Tess knows she's good; she's got instincts, good ones, and she knows how to read people, how to talk them into things and how to schmooze just the right way to make them comfortable. If she just had a _chance -_ if there was only the right meeting, the right opportunity, the right conversation where someone would just ask her opinion about the _work_ instead of about the fucking coffee - but of course that was never going to happen, when she walked into every room holding a box of donuts. People look at one thing, and then that's all they see. It's human nature.

Jack Trainer looks at people and sees numbers; he's a financial bloodhound, a real old-fashioned accounts man. He never would've looked at Tess twice if he'd been in any of those meetings - not that he was, his and Katharine's break up was pretty fucking bitter, to the point that Tess was under strict "straight to voicemail" orders whenever anyone from Jack's firm called. This was why Tess tried it - Katharine was in France, what was she gonna do? Complain that Tess had snagged her a new account while she was away? So she did it with Katharine's ex - would that matter? Nobody was ever going to give her a shot otherwise. You had to fight for what you wanted - especially on Wall Street. Nobody was going to be moved by a plucky secretary's sob story, no matter how good she looked in a business suit.

She really was going to give Katharine credit. Honest. She was just going to...fib a little about her own position, and could you blame her?

But then: the Xanax. Tess doesn't remember what she'd said at yoga, just that it had been cute enough and harmless enough that Jack had driven her home, and left his card on her kitchen counter, with his cell phone number written on the back, and also his gym bag, forgotten in the hallway next to her laundry basket. Overwhelmed with humiliation at the knowledge that Jack Trainer, Jack Trainer of _Robertson & Fielder_, for fuck's sake, had seen her dirty bunny rabbit socks, Tess called him to arrange a hostage swap for the coat he'd apparently forgotten to carry up from the car. They met at Starbucks, and Jack showed up with the wrong coat, which was pretty fucking cute - "Wait," he'd said, "I think this is my mother's. Oh my God, I'm so sorry - " - and work soon became a secondary priority behind impressing him, because Tess took one look at his buttoned-up shirt cuffs and bewildered grumpiness and thought, _oh yeah, Daddy._

She's got problems. Not limited to the fact that Jack thinks she's a stockbroker on Katharine's level of authority - implied! She's been implying, not lying! That's sort of better, right? - but also that when her boss comes back from gallivanting around France with her scandalously young new boyfriend, Tess is going to get murdered. She's been managing Katharine's social life for a year now, and she knows some shady fucking people. Cyn is convinced there are mafia connections.

Tess is good at it, though. This deal is good, it's viable and it's going to make them money; she can feel it. There was nothing else like the high she felt when she got Rick Montgomery at NBC on board - even though Jack's idea to crash his PTA meeting was fucking batshit (he can be a real wild card sometimes, it's mad charming) Tess pulled it together and she made it work, talked him into it, and now they've managed to turn their snowball idea into a giant boulder, picking up steam as it rolls down the hill. NBC was a giant; it was a long shot sort of deal, the kind of deal that launched careers into fucking space and she and Jack were actually pulling it off, his partners at the firm were all on board, the stock was going up, the gossip was getting out of control on the trading floor and the message boards. Tess had pulled half of her own office into the scam too - when Katharine got back she really was gonna go nuclear - they were working ten hour days, half the accounting department was on her side, and the entire secretarial staff was running around frantically, trying to cover Tess' ass with the board. But it was going to work. It was going to fucking work.

Jack knew it, too. She could see now why he was so good, why people bent over backwards to schmooze him even when they thought he was as asshole; he was focused and sharp, he knew how to crunch numbers and how to put the paperwork together and he'd work all night himself to do it, he never pawned things off onto the people who worked for him. Tess didn't want to spend much time at his office at first, afraid that her cover would get blown in some ridiculous way and the whole thing would fall apart, but it was impossible not to get sucked into the atmosphere over there, the way that people chatted in the hallways like they actually liked each other, the family photo board in the break room where people would put up snapshots of their kids and their spouses and their dogs, the dorky birthday parties where Jack's boss - Owen Fielder, FiDi legend, there was a character based on him in The Wolf of Wall Street - would make everybody wear paper cone hats and lead a group singalong of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." Compared to Tess' office? It was fucking heaven.

And then there's Jack. Jack, who stammered a little when she asked him if they'd slept together, who looked appalled when Tess snapped something pithy and bitter about drunk girls in yoga pants. He has dinner with his mom every Friday night, and he has a treadmill in his office, and has no idea about the running joke his entire office has about his spare suits, which he keeps stashed in weird places all over the place. After the PTA meeting, he invited himself into her apartment - they'd stopped for whiskey sours on the way home, they were both a little giddy/punchy - and kissed her for about twenty fucking minutes in the hallway, right next to her bunny rabbit socks, which she still hadn't washed. His hands on her face, big and strong and gentle, and he hadn't even pushed her against the wall or gone for her breasts or rubbed his cock against her leg, like any other man would've done. He just kissed her. That's all. Just kissing, and every few minutes, he'd pull away and grin like a little boy, like he was having the time of his life.

Tess is in trouble. If he ever talks to her again, after all of this, she's going to have to stand outside his apartment building with a boombox or something, because he's just unreal. It's a bad situation.

"You know he probably wants kids," Cyn says, snapping her gum as she scrolls through Tinder on Tess' couch. "He's one of those straight edge types that wants a brownstone in Brooklyn. He's gonna send his two-point-five toddlers to Montessori schools and hire a Jamaican nanny he can pay for less than minimum wage."

"Jack's an excellent boss," Tess defends, frowning at her a little. "He doesn't talk down to people, he writes reference letters, he stands up for his people when they fuck up with clients. And he tips really well. So if he hired a nanny, he'd pay her a living wage."

"Ookay, so you're fucked," Cyn says, raising her eyebrows. "Have you even nailed him yet?"

Tess flushes. "No."

"Wow." Cyn actually puts her phone down. "You're super fucked."

Yeah. She knows.

"Stop fidgeting," Jack says.

"I'm not fidgeting," Tess says back, and then fusses with her scarf again. She's trying to hide the hickey he gave her last night in the Uber, so really this is his fault and he could stop nagging her about it already, thanks very much. "Are you sure this is kosher? We're technically crashing again."

"Owen's wife wants to meet you," Jack says, in a sort of bitchy-adjacent tone that he gets whenever he thinks she's being ditzy on purpose.

"Yeah, but he didn't invite us to his daughter's _engagement party_!"

"He put it on Facebook," Jack says with a shrug. Pausing by the empty coat check - of course the Fielders could afford to buy out the freaking hotel for their daughter's shindig, _Jesus_ Tess is nervous - Jack casually shrugs out of his suit coat and tosses it over the counter. There's a pile of jackets down there, just on the floor, because apparently that's just what one does when there's no attendant. Tess wrinkles her nose and shakes her head when Jack gestures for hers; this is Katharine's Burberry wool blend duffle, no fucking way she's letting Jack throw it on top of everyone's tweed sport jackets. "It's gonna be hot in there."

"Jack," Tess says, biting her lip. She glances uncertainly at the event hall's open doors; there's an upbeat jazz song playing loudly, and the echoing sound of half-drunken laughter. She likes Owen a lot, she thinks he seems like a decent guy and Jack looks up to him a lot, everyone she's met at R&F says he's a good boss, but this is something different. This is like - getting invited to Sophia Westing's birthday party because she thinks Tess' family was a lot richer than they were, that when Tess said her dad worked in Manhattan, Sophie thought that meant he wore a suit. Tess still feels a little nauseous every time she hears Hit Me Baby (One More Time), which had been playing during the disastrous confrontation when everyone saw Tess getting dropped off in an American Rooter van.

"It'll be fine," Jack says, flippant at first, but when he sees her face, he turns on one heel and his face goes soft. "Hey. Tess. He likes you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, but." Tess shakes her hair out, giving herself a little head rush, a trick she learned after one too many all-nighters in college. "Yeah. Ignore me, I'm being stupid."

"You're not stupid," Jack says, reaching out for her hand. She takes it, smiling up at his concerned face. "And you've gotta take the coat off. You're gonna boil to death."

"It's a nice jacket, Jack."

"Are you gonna dance with me, in that jacket?" Jack makes a stupid face, raising his eyebrows like he did the first night they got drunk together, trying to order tequila in Spanish from a bartender who was so over his shit he ended up walking away mid-sentence. "Because you have to dance with me. I saw Wedding Crashers; I know how this works."

"I seriously cannot picture you watching Wedding Crashers," Tess says, hearing herself giggle a little as she talks, like some high schooler on the phone with her boyfriend. "Were you forced into it? Did it offend you?"

"I don't know, I thought it was kind of funny," Jack says. "I like Rachel McAdams. Come on." He fusses her out of the coat, and then waves her off when she tries to protest, holding up one finger. "Wait. Trust your man, Ms. McGill."

"You're not my man," Tess teases, even though he kind of is. "Jack, seriously, it's like a fifteen hundred dollar coat - "

"Trust!" Jack interrupts, and then makes that stupid face again and climbs over the coat check counter. Tess laughs out loud, clapping one hand over her mouth as it echoes in the empty lobby. He fumbles the landing a little, but pops back up unscathed, and proceeds to carefully hang her coat up on one of the hangers. "Okay, I think it's safe. Should I lock it up, or something? Put an armed guard on it?"

"You know, I think there's a gate thing on the left side there," Tess says. "You didn't have to climb."

"Real men don't need _gates_ ," Jack says with a scoff, and flops his way back over the counter. "You know what that was, baby? Chivalry."

He sounds so utterly ridiculous saying the word "baby" out loud that Tess leans in and kisses his stupid face. Jack smiles into it, which widens into his silly, excited grin when she pulls away. "My hero."

"Does that mean you'll dance with me?"

"I'll consider it," Tess says, which means yes. (The other thing she really likes about him is that he always makes her forget to be nervous, which is a great quality in both a colleague and a man-friend. Tess likes him so much.)

Leah Fielder is marrying the drummer from Greta Van Fleet, which is pretty funny, since it means this party is an unholy mashup of twentysomething hip kids and a bunch of middle aged Wall Street financial brokers. Jack steers her through the crowd with the confidence of a man who has no idea what a Greta Van Fleet is. Tess, on the other hand, has several miniature heart attacks by the time they reach the open bar, because there are a lot of celebrities here, holy shit.

"That was the Panic at the Disco guy, Jack - Panic at the Disco guy is over there talking to Lois from Accounting!"

Jack looks vaguely perplexed, but smiles at her politely. "That's...cool?" he guesses.

Tess swallows, feeling a little nauseous still. "Should we have brought a present?"

"I sent them a thing, a - well, I don't know what I sent them," Jack says with a shrug. He motions at the bartender, who is the same guy who does all the office events, Tess has met him like five or six times by now. He also has their drinks memorized, which Tess supposes is just one of those perks that come along with being a bigshot. (She likes that a lot, too.) "Mary picked something out. She's got better taste than me."

"You know, if I were a lesser woman, I'd be jealous of how impressed you are by your assistant," Tess says. "Lucky for you, I'm bigger than that."

"Mary is very impressive!" Jack says. He reaches out and pulls her closer by her waist, which makes Tess squirm a little, thinking of all the very important, powerful people that are in the room. "I am also impressed by you. And this dress."

"I've got a head for business and a body for sin," Tess says, deepening her voice and batting her eyelashes, turning the moment silly. She's rewarded with a laugh. "Hey - no PDA, your boss is here."

"Sorry." Jack slides his hands back to safe territory, looking momentarily sheepish, as the bartender pushes their drinks over. Jack hands her her martini with a sly smile. "Pretty sure they all know how impressed I am by you, though. I've got a shit poker face."

"You really do," Tess murmurs, over the lip of her glass. She glances over Jack's shoulder, at Owen Fielder, dancing with his wife by one of the large windows. She doesn't know how to explain it to Jack, how she can't trust these people with the same openheartedness that he can. They might be good people - great people, even. But it's different. Jack's got money, his father was a Senator, his mom's a corporate lawyer, and it's just...so different.

"I hear you, though. I do." Jack swallows his bourbon quickly, pushing the empty glass back on the bar. That'll be the only drink he has tonight - he's pretty strict with himself about that sort of thing, which is another thing that Tess likes. "We should mingle. You know - talk to other people for a change."

"I've got some asses to kiss, that's for sure," Tess says wryly. "Meet you back here in twenty?"

"I'll be the one in the blue tie," Jack says, flipping his offensively garish, bright blue tie at her. Tess crosses her eyes at him a little, over her shoulder as she walks away. Nerd.

There's a group of girls surrounding Leah that Tess is pretty sure she knows from watching the Disney Channel in the early 2000s, and - also, either the DJ looks exactly Miley Cyrus, or fucking Miley Cyrus is the fucking DJ. But the real world people all seem to be crowded in the general vicinity of the bar, which suits Tess just fine, since they're all more agreeable that way. She makes her way through to Owen eventually, who is much less scarier now that Tess has seen him slow dancing off-beat with his cute, giggly wife.

"Well hey there, hotshot," Owen says, who is, of course, the type of boss who gives people names like "hotshot" and "slugger." "Glad you made it! Is that your first drink, or your third?"

"First, I'm afraid," Tess says, and Owen makes an offended face.

"Everyone else is on their third! You need to catch up." He lifts a glass of champagne off of a nearby table, which nobody is sitting at, and seems to exist for the sole purpose of holding up ready-to-go glasses of champagne. "Here."

Tess swaps him for her nearly-empty martini, which he sets blithely on top of someone's discarded scarf. "Thank you, sir."

"Call me Owen." He angles his shoulders in, boxing out the nearby group of people, small talking a few feet away. With the illusion of privacy, Tess' nerves come back, and her hands shake a little as she tries the champagne. Which is excellent. Of course. "Do you mind if I call you Tess?"

"No, of course not." Tess smiles, catching sight of Jack, who looks to be caught in conversation with that mean lady from the third floor. She calms down a little, just at the sight of him. "Congratulations, _Owen_ , if you don't mind me saying. You must be very proud - they're a very handsome couple."

"He's a moron," Owen says genially, grinning across the dance floor at his daughter. "Complete tool. But he loves her." He shrugs. "Can't ask for more."

Tess grins. "Well, you could. But - "

"I wouldn't come out rosy in that deal," Owen finishes, with a jovial little chuckle. He's always sort of friendly, in the charming New York way that a lot of men with money have, like they don't have a care in the world. His reputation around town is one of integrity and forthrightness, which is one of the reasons why Tess felt confident enough to try this whole thing with Jack, and the R&F firm - she knew they wouldn't bullshit her. He's also a well-known, staunch Democrat, which, frankly? Helps. "Listen. You and Jack - "

Tess clears her throat, startled.

Owen raises both hands. "None of my business. Was just gonna say - you make a handsome couple too." He shrugs. "Katharine Parker must be stewing on her yacht about it. Nice catch, bucko. Swiping her job and the man? Amazing. Nobody deserves that more than her."

Tess laughs, a little nervously. "I'm - I'm not sure what you mean, sir, I didn't - "

"Oh." Owen waves his hand. "Come on. It's impressive, that's all I'm saying. I like you, Tess, you've got a lot of nerve, a lotta smarts, and a lot of balls - excuse my language." He tilts his head at her, like they're sharing a joke. "And there's no love lost between us and RBC. When they fire you for all of this - gimme a call, why don't you? I'll put you to work, that's for sure." He pauses, not seeming to notice that every blood cell in Tess' entire body has suddenly turned to ice. "Do we have an HR policy about office dating? Hm. I'll have to look into that. I'm sure we've got to have something."

Tess carefully lowers her champagne glass back to the table, and tries to breathe normally. "Sir? I don't…"

"Huge balls!" Owen interrupts, laughing loudly. He draws a couple heads, with amused expressions, but nobody seems to think this is out of the ordinary. "How you're getting those dinosaurs at your office to go along with it is beyond me. But good work, kiddo. Brilliant work." He pats her elbow nicely, like a teacher congratulating her on a good grade, or something. "Like I said, give me a call when the dust settles. You've got a job if you need it. If they don't want you, I sure as hell do."

"I - " Tess feels like the room is spinning, maybe, or it could just be the numbing terror. "Sir, if you don't mind me asking - how did you know?"

"How did I know?" Owen laughs like she's just said something cute. "I Googled you, McGill. 'How did I know.'" He chuckles to himself. "Funny, too. You're the whole package." He tips his stem glass in her direction, like a half-salute.

"Right," Tess says faintly, feeling like the stupidest girl in New York. "You Googled me." She smiles weakly. "Of course you did."

"It's 2020, Tess! A brand new decade." He's already distracted, moving onto the next conversation in his head, glancing around at the room to see who might approach him next. Tess snags her champagne quickly, before he knocks it over with his elbow. "Enjoy the party, huh? Get to that third drink - it's free." He winks at her, which is weird, but she's sure he means it in a nice way, and ambles off. Tess tries to keep her jaw off the floor, as she watches him go.

Jesus Christ. He _Googled_ her. Tess drains her champagne glass in one, long, desperate gulp.

"Tess! Hey - oh, are we dancing now?" Jack stumbles a little, trying to keep up as Tess physically drags him off towards the door. "Huh, this is a weird way to dance. Maybe they do it different in Brooklyn, though - mmph!"

Hard to talk with a tongue in your mouth - this is a trick Tess knows very well. Also much nicer than just covering their mouth with your hand, and with Jack there's the added benefit of the goofy look on his face once she pulls away. "Jack."

"Um, yeah," Jack says, a little dazed. He glances around, uncertainly, since they're still standing in the doorway of the ballroom. "I thought you didn't like PDA?"

"Did you Google me, Jack?" Tess asks, her eyes narrowed.

"Is that a euphemism for something?" Jack asks, his brow creased. Tess shakes her head, and keeps looking at him. "No. Should I have?"

Tess' shoulders slump. She's gone through the entire gamut of human emotion in the minute and a half it took to say a polite goodbye to the Fielders and then walk over to retrieve him; in that long minute, she'd landed on some weird, backwards hope that maybe he's known all along, and she could avoid this conversation altogether. "Come on. Let's go to the coat room - I have to tell you something."

"Sexy," Jack comments, but he sounds sort of wary, and he grabs her hand as they leave the room, squeezing it a little as they make their way back towards the empty coat room. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Tess drags him over to the gate in the counter, shooting him a warning look before opening it, and ushering him inside. On the floor is an even bigger pile of coats - is this an inside joke, or something? - and Tess unceremoniously kicks a few of them aside, trampling over the rest, pulling Jack behind her by his hand. "This is not a sexy thing, fair warning."

"Kinda picked up on that vibe," Jack comments, reaching out to steady her as she stumbles over somebody's trenchcoat. "Are you sure you're fine? Did someone say something to you?"

Tess squeezes her eyes shut, and turns on her heel. She doesn't open them. Bite the bullet, Tess. Just fucking bite it. "I'm a secretary, Jack."

A beat of silence, and then Jack squeezes her hand again. "No you're not."

"Yes I am."

"No you're not."

"Yes," Tess opens her eyes, "I am."

Jack's looking at her weirdly, an uncertain smile on his face, like he's not sure if she's joking. "No, you're - "

"Yes!" Tess stomps her foot. "I'm telling you something, Jack! Stay with me. I'm a secretary." She snaps her fingers in his face, pretty rudely, but it only makes him laugh a little, batting her hand away with his free one. "I don't work with Katharine, I work for her. I'm her bitch, Jack! I do her laundry and I clean up her dog's shit, and I answer her phone and that's it! I took the meeting with you because I knew she wanted me to blow it off, and I was pissed at her, but then what happened, well - it happened, and then we started talking and when you asked me what I thought about the NBC board shakeup, and God, I don't know, I didn't mean to lie but I didn't think you'd take me seriously otherwise." She takes a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut again. "I wasn't lying to you. I wasn't. I mean I was, but I wasn't lying to you, I was lying...to myself, because I wanted to pretend, and also I thought it would help somehow, if I just pretended like I was already doing it. Sometimes that's the only way to do it." She trails off helplessly, gathering her courage to open her eyes again, but because she's a big fat coward and her balls aren't quite as big as Owen Fielder thinks, her gaze only makes it up to his chin. "I'm sorry. The you and me thing is a different thing from the work thing, but I'm sorry for both, but in different ways for both. She steals my ideas, you know." To her horror, she's starting to tear up. "She...I would say things, in meetings, and she'd just take them. She does it all the time. And everybody I told just told me to shut up about it, in not so many words, and I just - "

"Okay. Okay, hey." Jack's hands come up, around her face, his big palms pressed lightly against her cheeks. Tess feels her breath stutter, like she can't hold it in anymore. "I didn't know that. About Katharine, I mean - she has a reputation for that sort of thing but I guess I didn't want to believe it." He taps his thumbs against her cheeks, patiently waiting until she opens her eyes and looks. Her breath catches again, at the look on her face. "I'm sorry, baby."

Somehow this "baby" lands just right. "Jack, I - "

"Don't apologize again, please. Did you think I didn't know?" He laughs a little. "Honey. I didn't know what you did but I knew you were bluffing. Come on. I'm not an idiot."

Tess laughs a little, shortly, and then lets herself break into a longer one, relief making her dizzy. "No. I'm the idiot."

"You're not an idiot," Jack says firmly, leaning in to kiss her forehead. "You're a lot of things, but you're not an idiot. You're about to make us a lot of money, and idiots can't do that." He pulls back a little, enough so that he can meet her eyes. "I assume you have a plan for when Katharine finds out, but what do you need? A reference, damage control? A bodyguard, maybe?"

"I think…" Tess swallows. "Well, your boss just offered me a job. So there's that." Jack doesn't look all that surprised at that one. "But I might take you up on the bodyguard. She's gonna kill me."

"If we get this deal on paper before she gets back, she won't be able to touch you," Jack says, a little fiercely. His face changes. "Did you think I would think - because I used to see Katharine - that you were trying to get back at her by - "

"God! I don't know. I mean - I've been twisted up about this for weeks, I didn't really know what you'd think," Tess says quickly. "It's not, by the way. It's so totally, unbelievably _not_ that."

"I know," Jack says confidently. "Yeah. I know that."

Tess smiles back at him, warmed by his regard, like she always is. _Fucked_ , says the little Cyn voice that lives in her head. Fucked? Yeah. Totally fucked. "This is weird, right? Like unprofessional or something? What's that phrase - don't shit where you eat?"

"I work fifty hours a week, if I didn't meet people to...eat there, I would starve to death," Jack says. Tess snorts. "That was a much more clever analogy in my head."

"I think it's a metaphor actually," Tess says.

"Whatever," says Jack, and kisses her. Kisses her for a long time, actually, with his hands in her hair, tilting her head back, licking into her mouth like he's got all the time in the world. Because he does, and they do, and maybe - well, Tess could get used to that approach to life, if she tried.

"My dad's a plumber," she murmurs, when he pulls away to breathe, leaning his cheek against her forehead and gripping the back of her neck like he's trying to calm down a little, which is sort of exciting. She can feel him twitching a little, from the intensity of the kiss, and probably what she just said, which wasn't exactly sexy. "My mom teaches English at William E Grady High School, in Brighton Beach."

"Oh," Jack says, laughing a little. "Um. Okay."

"I went to CUNY," Tess whispers, knowing this is weird, but whatever, she wants him to know. Pulling back a little, she kisses his chin. "And I only own like, one nice dress. I've been stealing Katharine's clothes for all the fancy things we've had to go to."

"That, I knew," Jack says. "I recognized some of the outfits." He smiles down at her. "I went to the University of Missouri."

"What - wait, really?"

Jack nods earnestly. "I followed a girl there."

Tess tilts her head back and laughs.

"Needless to say, it didn't work out. But it was a great place to go to school. I had a really good experience." He slides his hands down to her shoulders and squeezes. "Do you want to get out of here? We can talk some more."

"Yes," Tess says, breathless and happy.

His face softens, impossibly kind. "You're not a secretary. You know what I mean? You're not."

Tess takes a deep breath, and nods. "Yeah." She shakes her hair out, just to get the blood moving again. A lot of it's still frozen. "I'm not stupid, you know? Sheesh."

Jack laughs. "That," he says, "I knew from the beginning."

**Author's Note:**

> note: author knows absolutely nothing about stocks, or stockbroking, or wall street, or serious business people who do mergers and things, aside from what i learned from watching this movie a million times as a child. hope it wasn't _too_ obvious!


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